The concrete appearence of the words in every language is defined by the
occurrence and sequence of a certain number of phonetic units (phonems)
[1]. The Thracian language has developed its own phonetic
system after its separation from the Proto-Indo-European
(PIE). Some of the Indo-European (IE) phonems have remained unchanged, whereas
others have experienced some change, especially regarding the consonants. The
phonetic system of the Thracian could be described purely descriptive,
regardless of the origin of the particular phonems, or on a historical basis, in
a diachronical perspective, that is comparing it with the phonetic systems of
the other Indo-European languages. Following the second methodology would throw
more light on the problem of the position of the Thracian in the group of the IE
languages, which is why I have chosen it.

The
preserved bits of the Thracian are chronologically erratic. The earliest records are
from the end of the second millenium B.C. (some Thracian personal, tribal and
geographical names attested in the Iliad and the Odyssey, whose oldest parts
originate from the end of the Mycenaean period), the latest – from the 6.
century AD. Certainly, during this long period of 1600 years the phonetics of
the Thracian has been changing, a fact that can be observed on the basis of the
evidence from the last centuries of the Thracian history.

1. A phoneme is a
basic, theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words.

105

In some cases the possibility of a certain Greek influence is not excluded, and
after the arrival of the Romans – accordingly Latin. Those are problems, which
have not been adequately researched yet. The important thing, however, is that
on the basis of the etymological analysis of the material we are able to
reconstruct to a large extent the phonetic system of the Thracian and to
identify a number of very old sound changes, as well as some that must have
taken place in the late period of the evolution of the language.

The vowels

The IE featured in its last period long and short vowels: a, e, i, o, u,
ə and ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. In the first period of its
history, the Thracian preserved that state, excluding the short o, which
changed to a and the so called Schwa (ə),
that was substituted in Thracian (as in the most IE languages) by a.

IE a>
Thr. a. There are many examples of that change: Hydronym (HN) Asamus
–

part of the curd,
whey”; Toponym (TN) Meldia – IE *meldh-, cf. Lithuanian
(Lit) meldà, méldas
“a kind of cane”. In the late period of the Thracian (it well may be the case
only in some dialects) the e, followed by –nt(h)– developed to
i, which can be concluded of the existence of the form –cinthus in
the personal name (PN) Dias-cinthos alongside –centus, -kenthos
(in Dias-centus and Dias-kenthos)
< IE *kento-s
“child, descendant”, Lat re-cens “fresh, young, new”. The unstressed e
tended to i (reduction), maybe a vernacular feature, cf. the parallel
forms Desa-(kenthos) and Disa-(centus), Diza-(kenthos) – IE dheso
“god” in Gk theós.

Panisas < IE *pon-iso,
stem *pon(i)- in Gothic (Got) fani “mud”, Middle Irish (MIr) HN
On, Onach (swamp); Thr. TN Markellai< IE *morkā in
Lit markà “a hole, used in the treatment of hemp”, Ukrainian morokva
“mire” (from Proto-Slavic *mărky, -ъve)
< IE *merk in Lit
mekti (merkiù) “to put in water, to dip, to wet”. The IE ending
in Nominative, singular of the –o-roots was accordingly –as in
Thracian, which can be concluded of the exactly rendered HN Iuras, Panisas
(alongside Panisos), PN Taruthinas (alongside –os). But in
the most cases the ending was rendered as –os (in the Greek sources) or –us
(in the Latin; sometimes under Greek influence also –os), being the
result of an (morphological) adaptation of the Thracian nouns of masculine
gender, ending with –as to the Greek –os and the Latin –us.

IE u>
Thr. u:
Suitulēnos, a sobriquet of the Heros, a development of the TN *Suitula,

cf. Lit
švitulỹs “something glaring, light”; Muka- in PN Muka-boris,
Muka-poris and others – IE *muk, cf. Iranian muka- in
Ossethian mugæ “family”, muggag “seed, house”. Sometimes the
Thracian u was represented by an o in Greek (and also in Latin),
which could be explained by the openness of the Thracian u (so D.
Detchev) or by a peculiarity of the Greek vowel development: the letter υ
has already been used to denote ü or (in a later time) even i, so
that the Thracian u could not be represented by an υ.

2. This vowel has developed in the late
IE from the composition of the so called second laryngeal and e, that is: H2e.

107

(ζελᾶς)
in other Greek sources; from IE *g’hēlā), if the first example does not
reflect the Greek change of ē (η)
to i. I see a sure example for that sound change in a Thracian loan word
in Bulgarian: griv “gray (of a dove, falcon, eye)”, OBul *grivъ,
borrowed in modern Greek as grivós, Romanian griv “colourful,
spotted white and black” from the Thr. *grīvas< Old Thr. *grēvas<
IE

*g()hrēo-s,
cf. Old High German (OHG) grāo, genitive grāwes, German
grau.

century B.C. and
Herodotus in the 5. century B.C.) < IE *Srū-mōn,
cf. Lit sraumuõ, -meñs “a quick current“, where the –uo
traces back to IE ō; Mygdon (Μυγδών,
a personal name, used by Homer) is in fact a name of a region, known later as
Mygdonia, from IE *Mko-ghdhōm,
the second part being connected to Gk chthōn “earth, ground”.

The quantity of the
Thracian vowels often was not reflected in Greek, particularly the ā and
ī. On the basis of the above mentioned examples we can assume that long
vowels were a part of the Thracian phonetic system, that is, the length of the
vowels was a distinctive attribute; hence long a and i must have
existed along ō, ē, and ī. For example the IE ā as
an ending in the singular, nominative form of the feminine nouns of the ā-root
would be preserved; cf. Thr. bria “town, city” < IE *riā,
cf. Tocharian (To) A ri, B riye „town, a refuge”; -diza
in TN Tyro-diza, Oru-disza < IE *dhig’hā
“fortress”. One should also keep in mind that the Thracian ā was not
rarely represented by an η
in Greek (especially at the end of a word), accordingly to the sound laws of the
Greek (Ionic-Attic), compare for example the Thr. TN Στρύμη,
which in Thracian must have been *Strmā.

In late Thracian several changes affected the long vowels. The long ū
lost its dislabilized and evolved to a front vowel, i, possibly via ü.
Such a change can be suggested on the basis of a comparison of the name
Dinace (from a Latin inscription in Carnuntum, Austria), if it is correctly
regiven, and

108

the Dunaka (Δούνακα,
Accusative), mentioned by Strabo < IE *Dhūn-āk,
root: IE *dhūn, cf. the OE dūn “elevation, mountain”. The
same change of ū to ī is possibly reflected in the Thr. PN Bizo,
Bizens, Bizias, Bizzos, Deo-Bizos (all of them known from inscriptions)
alongside forms like Byzas, Byzēs, Byzos, which were represented in Greek
by an υ
in the stem; that Greek υ
was used to represent Thr. ū is obvious, if we consider the etymology of
the names: from IE *bhūg’o-s in Av būza “a he-goat”. However, the
sound change ū> ī
must have been typical just for some dialects and not for the whole Thracian
language area. The rendering of the Thracian tribal name Bess as Βησσοί
(with η
= ē) by Herodotus and as Βέσσοι
by the late autors (like Strabo, Polybius etc.) cannot be seen as an evidence
for a change ē
>e:
in the Greek language of the 1.-2. century AD η
already denoted i corresponding to the Greek sound development, that is
why the foreign ē could not be represented by that letter. It is well
possible that the Greek autors had to use ε,
although it didn’t represent a long vowel at that time.

Previous to ē and ū at the beginning of a word sometimes appears a
prothetic j-, as in the following examples: HN Ieterus< IE *ētro-, OHG
ātar “quick” (ā< IE ē); Iuras< IE *Ūro-s,
cf. the Old Norse (ONo) ūr “drizzle”, Lat ūrina “urine”,
Lit (also with a prothetic j-) jra
(and plural jrios,
-s)
“sea”, Latvian jūra “the same”. However, this phonetic phenomenon was not common
Thracian, as we can see from the examples of an ū at the beginning of
words (sure evidence of ē does not exist): HN Ucasus, Utus
(etymologically both had a long ū at the beginning, s. p. 48).

In Thracian (especially in its late period, beginning with the 3.-2. century BC)
the unstressed vowels were apparently subject to a reduction, as a result of
which they could sometimes even fully disappear. The PN Mygdōn (Homer)
gives us the earliest example for this phenomenon (syncope): the name is
connected to the land, which was later to be known as Mygdonia (Thucydides,
5. century BC), as per the offered etymology derived from *Mko-ghdōm
“marsh,
swampland” (s. p. 35). Another example for syncope is the HN Atlas
(Herodotus, 5. century BC) < *Attulas,
cf. the Latvian HN Adula and the German HN Attel < Attula
(s. p. 23). Syncopized appear in other Thracian names too, e.g. Pyr-mērulas
(a sobriquet of the Heros) alongside Pyru-mērulas and Pyry-mērulas;
the deity name (DN) Zbel-thurdos, Zbel-thiurdos etc. < older *Zibel-thurdos,
cf. the Latvian zibele “twinkling”; TN Zburulus< older

In the word zetráia “pot” < IE *g’hetraā the IE
diphthong eu is surprisingly substituted by e. In all likelyhood
the word was not reproduced correctly by Pollux (2. century). Admittedly there
is no sure example for the substitution of the IE eu, that is the case
with the rest of the IE diphthonhs as well.

In the late Thracian we can assume a monophthongization of ai to i
previous to consonants on the basis of the mountain name

110

Im- <
Haimos
(s. p. 30). The only example for a monophthongization au> o
is the TN Potelense, a Latin development of *Potela<
*Pautela (s. p. 39). However, because the same sound change is typical of
the balkanic Latin from the 2. century AD onward (see for examples H. Mihăescu
1978, p. 185), it is difficult to decide whether the monophthongization of au
to o previous to a stressed syllable (*Pautéla, *Potéla) took
place in the late Thracian or was due to the development of the balkanic Latin.

The IE
has resulted in Thracian in v, which was reproduced in Greek by υ,
β,
ου and in
Latin by v and b. An incontestable example for the conservation of
the Thr. v up to recent times in Bulgarian is the HN Veléka, that
was inherited from the Thracians: it is a development of the root *el-
in Lit velti “to wash”. Another example is the TN Βαίρος
(= Vairos), used by Ptolemaios (2. century AD), cf. Lit vairùs,
vairas “rotating, looping” < IE * o-ro-.
Thr. v was reproduced as ου
in the sobriquet of Dionissius Ουηρζεληνος,
a derivation of the TN *Verzela, cf. Lit HN Vérža. In the
first syllable of a word, previous to a vowel, v could disappear,
apparently under Greek influence, e.g. TN Egerica, cf. Lit HN
Veger, Latvian vedzere “a crick” < IE *eg-;
TN Idē, Idakos < IE * idhu-
“wood,
timber” in old irish fid “a tree, wood; a forest”, OIc viđr “a
tree”. In TN Chalá-stra the second element is derived of an older *strava,
cf. Latvian stràva “to stream, a stream, a downpour”, then the
-v- between two vowels has disappeared, presumably under Greek influence,
after that a contraction of -aa- > -а- took place so that it
came to -stra at the end. The Thracian v was not preserved after the dental
d (< IE dh), as in
PN Desa-kenthos, where the first element Desa-< IE *dheso-
“deity”,
compare to the related word in Lithuanian dvãsas “a ghost, a spirit”. The
conservation of Thr. v after the fricative consonants s and z
is attested by the following examples:

In the word bria “a town, a city”, which was reproduced in Greek as
βρία
(Strabo) and in the same manner in many TN (*Αλααι-

112

βρια, *Βολβα-βρια,
Μασκιοβρια,
Μεσαμβρία,
Πολτυμβρία
etc.), the Greek β
may have represented v or b. For good reasons, it is to assume
that we have the phonem b in that case, that is: Thr. v (<
IE )
previous to r altered to b. So the TN Mesemvrija (with this
pronunciation in more recent times) is written by Herodotus (5. century BC) as
Μεσαμ-βρίη,
and in his time the Greek letter β
denoted the sound b. The Slavs have adopted the name from the indigenous
population with its original -b-, compare the evidence from the Slav
sources: Nesбрь
(Нєсбръ, from the 11. century),
Nesębrь
(Нєсбръ, AD 1337). In the PN Esbenus
(Hesbenus) we have also a Thr. b< older v after
an s.

The consonants

We can observe many changes in the Thracian system of the consonants, some of
them are typical of other IE languages too.

The IE voiced aspirated consonants (the so called Mediae aspiratae) bh, dh,
gh in Thracian have lost their aspiration and have merged with b, d and g
(“und sind somit in reine stimmhafte Konsonanten b, d, g übergegangen”) .

If one encounters within the borders of Thracia a geographical name, in
which the IE voiced consonants (Mediae) are preserved, one can regard them as
non-Thracian. Such is the case with the antique TN Salmydes(s)ós
(Sophocles, Herodotus, Xenophon and others), that belonged to a coastal strip in
Eastern Thrace, a town (nowadays Midia on the coast of the Black Sea) and
maybe even a river. The basic form of the name is suested to have been *salm-udes-o-
or *salm-udes- “salty water”, the first element being of the same root as
Gk hálme “sea water, saltness, pepperiness”, the second as OI ud-án
“water”, Gk hydos “water”; accordinly the IE d was preserved
in the second part of the word –ydes(s)os. On the basis of this
phonetical criterion we can judge that the name was not Thracian. The fact that
in antique Thrace there were TN of non-Thracian origin is not astonishing. It is
enough to look at the present-day toponimy of the country: along the Slav, we
encounter here Romanian, Osman-Turkic, Greek as well as a smaller number of
adopted TN from Thracian. On the Black Sea coast there are not only Slav but
also old Greek names as Sozopol, Akhtopol (from Agatopolis),
Gálata (a rocky cape near Varna)
and so on.

The IE voiceless explosives (the so called Tenues) p, t, k have shifted
in Thracian to their correspondent aspirated consonants (the so called Tenues
aspiratae) p’, t’, k’ (ph, th, kh) (in Greek: ϕ,
θ and χ):

Because of the comparatively weak aspiration of p’, t’, k’ in Thracian,
relative to Greek (so Detchev), these consonants are often reproduced in Greek
as π,
τ,
κ and Latin
p, t, c respectively. E.g. we often encounter, alongside -phara in
TN Breiero-phara, -para (<
IE *(s)porā)
as a second element of TNs: Agata-para, Bessa-para, Brento-para, Drusi-para
etc. Alongside -αϕοςin TN
῎Οστ-αϕος-apa is
also to be found, in TN Burd-apa and in the sobriquet of the nymphs in an
inscription from the same place: Βουρδ-απ-ηναι;
Along -kenthos, -centhus in PNs -centus occurs as well: Dias-centus,
Disa-centus, Epta-centus,

-kentios
in PN Μεστι-κεντιος;
along -sychis (s. above) also -sykis in PN Ρυμη-συκις,

-sykos in PN Δεντυ-συκος,
Επτε-συκος,
-sucu in PN
Dentu-sucu.

The above discussed changes in the three groups of IE consonants bh dh gh, b
d g and

p t k,
known in linguistics as a “sound shift”, have not all happened at the same time
but in different periods; otherwise one should have expect to find only one
group of consonants (ph th kh). The sequence of the mentioned phonetic
processes can specified as follows: first, the IE Tenues p, t, k have
shifted to p’, t’, k’ (ph, th, kh); after the process had been
completed and the phonetic law had stopped to function, the second shift began
(the change b, d, g> p, t, k).
Only after the end of this shift

115

the third one took place – bh, dh, gh> b, d, g.
The chronology can be illustrated schematically:

The IE sonorant sounds r, l, m, n have not experienced a change in
Thracian.

The voiceless obstruents, no matter of what origin, can become voiced in the
neighbourship of a sonorant
(assimilation):

IE dr>
Thr.
tr>dr: PN Gaidrēs< IE *ghəidr-
in Lit gaidrùs “light (colour), clear (weather)”, Gk phaidrόs
“clear, bright, blazing”, from IE *ghēi,
which must have resulted in *gaitr- in Thracian; TrN Odrysai < *Udrusai,
from IE *udrā, that is with a dr instead of the expected tr< IE dr. On the
other hand, we have zetráia “pot” < IE *g’heutraā,
that is with a preserved tr (or thr).

The sound composition d
might have resulted in Thracian in a fricative sound ž (from an older
dž), which was reproduced in Gk as ζ and in Lat
as z, because those two languages do not have fricatives of the type of
ž, š. An example of such a rendering of IE d
is the HN Tonzos (Τόνζος),
which the Slavs of the upper reaches of the river have adopted under the form of
OBul Tža (Bg Tъža);
nowadays the river’s name in Bulgaria is Tundža, possibly a Turkicised
form instead of *Tunža. Apparently the latter form was borrowed after the
9.-10. century, as in Slav (Bulgarian) the phonetic law of the open syllables
(an effect of which was the emergence of a nasal from the combination of a vowel
and a nasal consonant previous to a consonant) lost its impact. Compare to the
Byzantine Τοῦνζα
(Theophanus, Chronicle, 8. century). The fricative -ž- in Bg Tъža
can be explained by the assumption, that it was present in Thracian name as
well, thus the HN in Thracian sounding something like *Tunža (or -as),
almost the same way as it is pronounced today.

Compositions of the consonants m, l and the semivowel
are represented in Thracian as follows:

2.IE kt> Thr. tt> t(th),
reproduced in Gk as θ:
the mountain name Athōs, Athōn < IE *Aktō-s,
*Aktō(n), cf. Gk akt “a steep bank”; Bg Atija (a
rocky peninsula, westward of Sozopol on the Black Sea) from a Thr. *Athija,
attested in a Graecised form as Anthium, Antheia < IE *Aktiā,
cf. Gk akt. This sound change must have occurred later
than the
previous one, at a time when the dissimilation of IE d-t (t-t) to
st was already a fact.